"Spain last night killed a controversial anti-P2P bill that would have made it easier to shut down websites that link to infringing content. The move was a blow to the ruling Socialist government, but it may be of even bigger concern to the US, which pushed, threatened, and cajoled Spain to clamp down on downloading. And Wikileaks can take a share of the credit for the defeat."

That comment is willfully ignorant at best. What a horrible thing to say about another nation!

My concern is that osnews used to be about OS's and now just a bashing board for promoting theft and bashing the US.

If you don't like the content then go somewhere else is all I can say to that over-simplistic statement.

Maybe people don't see the difference between their tv or car being stolen or data. It is the same. It is theft.

No, it's not theft. No matter how many times either I or other people on this forum try to explain this point, you still get people like you who either don't understand the concept or worse, willfully ignore the reality of the situation.

Somebody else before me has put all this in better terms so I'll just post his argument here:

"Don Munsil — February 3, 2010 at 1:23 pm

Copyright violation is not theft, neither morally or legally. Most copyright violation isn’t even a crime – it’s a civil issue, providing a justification for a lawsuit.

This whole “piracy is theft” crap is a framing device created by content industries to try to paint their opponents as crime-loving communists.

I, personally, do want to make sure artists and creators have a robust market for their work so they can get compensation for their creations, but I recognize that the reason we as a society provide them with the limited copyright is so that that market will exist and thrive. It’s not because of some moral commitment. It’s entirely about incentives to produce.

Right now, I am in complete agreement that it’s so easy to copy content that there is a risk of the market for content becoming either non-viable or at least less attractive, reducing considerably the incentives for production, and I’m actually very interesting in trying to fix that situation. I’m just realistic enough to see that ratcheting up the restrictions on copying is going to be ineffective, and possibly counterproductive, in achieving that goal.

Something similar happened with songwriting back in the early 20th century, and many people proposed fixes that included stronger laws and more criminal penalties for unauthorized song performance. Luckily for all concerned, people realized that was going to be unwieldy and ineffective and a system of compulsory payments was implemented instead, leading to the formation of ASCAP. And now (with limits) anyone can perform any song they like without having to get permission first as long as they pay the statutory royalty.

The result: the songwriting market still exists, there are still plenty of songs written, and songwriters get paid whenever their songs are performed or reproduced. The level of un-paid commercial performance is relatively small, because it’s easier to police commercial usage.

The point is that there are lots of ways of incentivizing production of works. Strong monopoly copyright is one. A less strong copyright with a compulsory payment system is another. There are other ideas that are interesting, and at bottom I just want us to pick a workable, efficient system with minimum government intervention.

And there’s always a possibility that non-commercial file sharing isn’t really what’s hurting the content industries. Every content industry is hurting, largely because there’s so much legitimate free stuff to see/read/hear on the internet. If we could somehow stamp out the filesharers, it’s not obvious that this would result in a significantly more robust market for content. And a robust market for content is the goal, not some kind of moral purity of artist’s rights."

Now do you get it? With comments like those above, somehow I doubt it.